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SWR BARROSELAS DAY 2 – POSITIVELY PSYCHED PARTYBOY REPORT

Another day, another joint, another beer and SWR is still not even halfway through. Except that I’m writing this shit two weeks later and its long gone.

But back then, there were still two days of awesomeness ahead of us and we were going to enjoy it to the fullest.

Starting with the annual Brutal Soccer which is a bunch of hungover drunks getting drunk again and playing soccer for the chance to win… a jug of fucking wine! It’s pretty terrible tasting table wine they got at the last minute, but it’s good for you.

We saw a little bit of the first game, the guys from Toxic Attack and Terror Empire got pounded hard in the ass by Wanderer but don’t feel bad you guys, they always win, getting pounded by Wanderer is to be expected. Also, the guy from Fundo do Poço is a football master, later I found out that Wanderer won, no surprise.

We missed the first two outside shows although one of our buddies caught “My Master the Sun” playing and he said it was great. He even texted me to get my ass down there but I didn’t listen, probably got sidetracked by stuff. Here are his thoughts on the band:

“Basically, a spiritual journey, hits you in the nuts then gives you chocolate milk to feel better.” Jonny

As to “Vircator”, we have already talked about them at Sonic Blast if you absolutely need our opinion on that. We have pictures though.

Inside we caught “Fides Inversa” opening the second stage. It was a very enjoyable black metal act, we arrived and there were guys with corpse paint dressed in tethered monk clothing blasting sweet musical darkness to the eager afternoon crowd, they brought some candles and everything. The drummer was singing and we figured that was the band, but then this blonde antichrist came out of nowhere and gave some more flavor to an already extremely pleasant performance.

We enjoyed the band to the last chord and then waited for the next shows. It was that time of day again when two bands play at the same time.

First on the free stage, our old buddies “Legacy of Brutallity”, they don’t know we’re old buddies yet because the last time we saw them at SWR XV on the main stage, we weren’t in this business yet, but we remember that these Spaniards nailed our nuts to the stage with their brutal performance that year. This year they did it again in style on the third stage and we loved it. What is it about Latinos and the third stage? Makes people so horny every time.

This time we didn’t want to do the same mistake as before so we pulled ourselves away from the rest of their show to catch the band playing at the same time on the main stage.

Ok, so from the info that I gathered before watching the show, “Cobalt” is black metal right? Me and the pigeon went inside to check this black metal and we were immediately extremely confused. What got us confused wasn’t the music, we couldn’t really focus on the music because the vocalist was dancing all the time, DANCING! He was prancing around everywhere doing this personal routine that I have never seen ever before in my life, what was that?

We’re not complaining or saying it was bad, hell we stuck around because of how much fun we were having looking at him go, he was really into it. It just felt really out of place for black metal, I’d picture that at a folk show maybe. It was still a good time though, keep on dancing “Cobalt”, top notch.

Later I found out that the dancing guy was actually Charlie Fell, old vocalist to a band I love called “Lord Mantis”, the drummer killed himself last year which ended the band, a truly sad day for music. Anyway, while listening to “Lord Mantis” I never EVER pictured someone dancing like that, killer vocals though, I’m going to miss them.

After the dancing around, it was time for some good old fashioned Portuguese death metal. “Goldenpyre”, the most local band possible with the brothers responsible for the whole event taking a break from being busy all the time so everyone else can have fun, came and forced fed us their delicious death metal fun.

The old school sounding kind of death metal fun, with parts to bang your head and parts to bang other people. They played old songs with old members, new songs to new and old fans, and dedicated their performance to their old vocalist Jarder, R.I.P.

A great performance to remember no doubt.

More death metal came next on the main stage with the Greeks “Dead Congregation”, they had a book on fire throughout the whole show, what was that shit made of? And what book was that? Probably the bible because metal.

Regardless of all that, they played a nice blend of doom death with old school blast beat death that the crowd didn’t really deserve. Yes, the badass Greeks punched us in the gut with an amazing death metal show and those people just stood there and took it standing still. One of our bros went for a spin trying to start a pit but no response.

Yes, there were some heads moving and people going crazy for the music, but a pit would have been nice. Anyway, “Dead Congregation” was good shit, slow gloomy riffs and sudden burst of violent death metal, would see again for sure, maybe if the crowd is drunker.

After some good old death metal came some good old Black Metal to the second stage with “Darvaza”. The vocalist’s stare would make you shit bricks. Big spikes, black boots, corpse paint and excellently performed black metal. No wonder too, they shared members with “Fides Inversa”.

We didn’t see the whole thing because we had to eat dinner sometime and after “Darvaza” it would be time to pay tribute.

If the Veiga brothers are partly responsible for the event, “Venom Inc.” was an act that represented the origins of many things metal and a large audience descended to the main stage to hear all the classics from the old times that gave birth to thrash metal and other shit.

I have to admit, always been more of a Bathory guy myself, but there was something unique and special about this show, I’m not in the know of why Venom split in two, but it seems these guys just want to play the classics the people know and love and have a good time, that’s alright with us.

Next on the second stage came more amazing Galician grind. We saw these guys for the first time a few years back playing on a movie theater hallway at the last Bracara Metal fest that ever happened. They ripped so much ass, it was amazing.

Naturally we were excited to see “Nashgul” in a big, proper stage like this one for the first time and the bastards from A Coruña did not disappoint. Kickass attitude, plenty of swirling drunks in the mosh pit and top shelf quality grindcore made for a fine display of violence from start to finish.

This was also a band we missed on our first ever Barroselas so this was a golden opportunity that felt great to enjoy.

Back on the main stage, things were getting really dark and mysterious as a mass of people awaited “Oranssi Pazuzu”. I just want to take a moment right here to mention this; there is a lot of shit at Barroselas every year that I’ve never heard of before but since not going is not an option (fuck every other festival, seriously though) when bands are confirmed, I take some time to go through them and see if any catch my interest and many times I get hooked on a band which builds on the hype of Barroselas.

All these years, I’ve fallen in love with many bands simply because the Veiga Brothers bring them here, last year it was the Icelandic black metal team, two years ago it was Ahab, Zom and Nightbringer but the list of what I learned in SWR is too long. Let’s move on to the next part of the festival.

This show was going to be one of those shows, after lazily checking the first riffs off their last album, we ended up eating the whole discography in days and were at this point oozing with anticipation.

The darkness was adding to the suspense, after a while the lights slowly glimmered to life and “Oranssi Pazuzu” walked casually on stage, smiling and greeting the audience as high praise already greeted them.

When “Kevät” began, the lights and music merged, they slowly became shadows, dancing to the rhythm they created while providing a visual and sonic build up that erupted into “Saturaatio”.

The show was amazing, we know a lot of bands have dumb gimmick genres that don’t really mean anything, but this is not the case, when people say “Oranssi Pazuzu” is psychedelic black metal that’s because it’s a fucking apt description.

Though it was a beautiful show that I will never forget (yes, even the part where the piano fell over, you should’ve seen how fucking fast they plugged all that shit back in place, maximum level of professionalism in a crisis, that’s tight) two things made me a little disappointed.

The first one was that the bottom half of the discography got left on the shelf. Sad right there but not a big problem, it was still good. Second, the seventeen minutes song from the last album? Why? You could have played four songs more or some shit, I mean I like the song, but playing it live takes too much of your time, I wanted to see you play “Hypnotisoitu viharukous”, that would have been amazingly lit and it’s five minutes of excellence, we’d get you a flute if you forgot yours, plenty of trees around here doing nothing, let’s make some fucking flutes for “Oranssi Pazuzu”.

Regardless of that, we got phenomenally baked with a lot of weed to their show, it was a real experience and we feel bad for anyone who missed this.

We went to the tent to get a grasp back on reality, it was raining like a motherfucker so once we were comfortable it got really hard to get up and go see “Grog”, but we know “Grog”, we know they always bring it and as everyone confirmed, they most certainly brought it this time as well.

Fucked up and listening the rain slam the tent, sleep was starting to settle in. But that couldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen. There was still some catching up to do on that night with some more old friends of ours.

As I heard the first bombs hit the floor, my body told the rain and wind to fuck off and I headed inside to see “Extreme Noise Terror” rip the skin off people’s faces with the amps. Having thoroughly enjoyed their memorable show at Obscene Extreme this year, there was no way we were going to miss these English bastards throwing down here at home.

Just like last time, they bombed the shit out of everyone with their classic crust punk and got everyone horny and swirling in the pit.

It was nice to see the different perspective between seeing them abroad and seeing them at home, especially when they told us to go open restaurants at their hometown because our food is the best. Drunk on Drugs will make you guys a nice dinner anytime you’re back in town, you deserve it since you were one of the first major influential bands to share our hard work, we highly appreciate it and we also appreciate that you keep playing after all these years.

Our energy was running dry after this and the rain wasn’t getting any better soon. I went for a joint with the pigeon in the car and we sat there listening to the songs “Oranssi Pazuzu” could have played and discussing why no one is tapping the market for a brand of pasta shaped like metal logos.

We missed the closing of the third stage (again) and felt like retards when they told us “Alcoholocaust” gave out free whiskey, wasted opportunity right there. Although we would have gone anyway, “Alcoholocaust” is a sweet band to see live every time and someone told me their show kicked “Extreme Noise Terror’s” show’s ass, but these are rumors and opinions, we wouldn’t know.

We also heard about “Systemik Violence”, mainly that they were calling metalheads faggots for not going to their show. We have no idea if this is true or not, we’ll leave the dick shit for Dick but we would like to recall something that “Dean Jones” from previously mentioned crust punk pioneers “Extreme Noise Terror” said last year at Obscene Extreme.

I don’t remember the exact words, but what he basically meant was this; he loved Obscene Extreme because at that festival, punks and metalheads were alright with each other and it was true. Everyone got along alright, why can’t we do that here too? We can, we do, but assholes and shitheads will always exist and sometimes punks and metalheads feel like proving themselves.

Stop trying to show people that your thing is the best thing out there, nobody cares. Then again, it might have been an exagerated story or maybe they told it wrong, we don’t know. We just care about the music.

That was it for the second day, one more awaits and believe you guys us, there is still much better shit to come from this SWR Drunk on Drugs Report.